Axles of Annihilation 250 - 78 Montréal Sexpos

AUSTIN, TX- The Texas Rollergirls are proud to have recently hosted the first-ever North American B-Team Championship Tournament, called the Full Metal Bracket. The weekend of October 16th-18th at the Blood Shed in Austin, Texas, the top 10 B-teams in North America were invited based on their rankings on Flat Track Stats as of June 30th, 2015.

Olivia Shootin’ John proposed the idea up earlier this year, and there seemed to be a lot of excitement and hunger for it in the derby world. B teams are becoming increasingly competitive but don’t have the same competitive platform as many of their leagues’ all-star teams. Over the course of the spring and summer, we formed a committee and the event really started to take shape. Legitimacy was very important – we wanted it to be a true championship complete with brackets, medals, MVPs, etc. We ran it as close to a Playoff or Championship tournament as possible in terms of procedure and production, such as having applications for refs and NSOs, tables for teams to sell their merch, announcers, djs, programs and photographers; all the bells and whistles.

And because it’s Austin, we had some awesome food trucks on site every day who had their own Food Metal Bracket. We did the best we could to bring the event to the world through live Twitter feed and Facebook. Originally we thought video wouldn’t be possible, but while it wasn’t perfect, we channeled the spirit of derby DIY and made it work as best we could. It took a lot of people to pull this off. We’re very fortunate to have such a dedicated pool of volunteers. We also had some great sponsors that really helped us make the tournament possible – Austin Subaru was huge, Riedell and Radar, Bont, The Expedition School, Lone Star Beer, Nuun, The Jackalope, and many others.

When we watch All-Star games, we see and cheer for all of the big names we know, and I hope the world now commits to memory another set of talented skaters to cheer for. Follow these ladies, not only for their talent, but for their potential and their drive. To paraphrase Michael Scott from The Office, you have no idea how high they can fly. So many of the games came down to the last few minutes, and it was clear that every team was giving their all in every game. The hustle was incredible.

Full Metal Bracket is what happens when you say YES to an idea you believe in. We’re so happy and proud to have introduced this to the derby world, and can’t wait to see what the future holds for B-teams!